`The Pianist'
Polanski's masterful
"Pianist" plumbs
Polands heartbreak.
"The Pianist" is a testimony to the power of music, the will to
live and the courage to stand against evil," wrote Roman
Polanski, pictured, in his "Director's Note."
pioneer drama Home at Last, and then played the
part of Mary Tyler Moore's stepson in the short-
lived CBS sitcom Annie Maguire.
Back in New York, he took classes at the American
Academy of Dramatic Arts and attended the High
School for the Performing Arts.
Brody attended college for a year before being
tapped to play a Depression-era delinquent in
Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill, followed by a
string of roles in small films, for which he increas-
ingly gained notice.
- The actor went on to portray a terrified soldier in
Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line — although he
was devastated when his highly touted role was all
but cut out of that film — and a mohawked punk
rocker in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam.
To portray a naive Jewish teenager in Barry
Levinson's 1950s drama Liberty Heights, Brody
stopped listening to modern music and watching TV.
He most recently starred as Hilary Swank's aristo-
cratic husband in the French Revolution drama The
Affair of the Necklace and as a photographer in early
1990s war-torn Croatia in Harrison's Flowers, oppo-
site Andie MacDowell.
Polanski's Pick
While Brody had worked with half a dozen promi-
nent directors by 2000, he was shocked when he got
a call from Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown),
out of the blue.
The director had seen Brody's performance in
Liberty Heights, and was interested in meeting him.
The actor invited Polanski to a screening of his most
recent work, Harrison's Flowers, in Paris, after which
they went out for a beer.
A few weeks later, Polanski offered Brody the role
— without asking him to audition, explained the
actor during a New York City press appearance, for
which he dressed casually in tan corduroys and a
dark fleece shirt.
"I was tremendously honored that he
chose me," said Brody, who learned that
Polanski had long hoped to make a
Holocaust film but found his subject only
after reading the 1999 re-publication of
Szpilman's stunning memoir.
The director, who at age 7 escaped the
Jewish ghetto in Krakow through a hole in
a barbed wire fence, and was hidden by
Polish peasants during the war, had report-
edly been asked to direct Schindler's List by
Steven Spielberg.
But he refrained because its Krakow set-
ting brought up too many painful child-
hood memories, including the deportation
of his parents to Auschwitz and his mother's
demise in the death camp (his father sur-
vived the war working in a stone quarry).
"I knew that one day I would make a
film about this painful chapter in Polish
history, but I did not want it to be based
on my own life," Polanski has written.
"If I were to work in those streets that
mean so much to me, emotionally and per-
sonally, they would become mere movie sets
to me. I wouldn't want that to happen."
Practice Makes Perfect
"We were on the same page from the get-go," said
Brody, who described Polanski's directorial style as
"passionate, enthusiastic and specific."
He wanted the film "to be ultimately subtle and
unsentimental in every respect," said the actor, who
studied Szpilman's memoir and the playing style of
composers of the time to help him with his per-
formance.
"Roman experienced so many parallels to what
Szpilman went through," said Brody. "They're both
survivors."
The filmmaker's own life contains more than its
share of tragedy. His Hollywood history includes the
murder of first wife Sharon Tate by members of the
Manson family and a sex scandal involving an
underage girl which sent him into a self-imposed
exile from America in the late 1970s.
Polanski had already looked at 1,400 British actors
for the English-speaking Szpilman role when he
broadened the search to America.
He has said he considered Brody for the role
because the actor had a vulnerable, charismatic
screen presence and aristocratic looks, but was still
relatively unknown.
The job was his if Brody agreed to lose weight,
learn some Polish and German and perform classical
piano reasonably well.
Brody, who played electronic keyboard but had
only rudimentary musical training, immediately
began practicing the piano for four hours a day. On
location in Germany and Poland, he had a piano in
every hotel room and a music teacher on every set
— while continuing to diet between takes.
Actor Thomas Kretschmann, who plays the compas-
sionate German officer who helps Szpilman survive,
recalled that a restaurant outing with Brody "meant
that I would eat dinner and he would sip Evian."
ADRIEN BRODY on page 54
MICHAEL FOX
Special to the Jewish News
he Pianist is a stunning film by any meas-
ure, but its title is misleading. For it is not
a graceful musician but a creature stripped
of identity that straggles across the screen for most
of Roman Polanski's intimate World War II epic.
The highly regarded Polish-Jewish composer and
pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman was performing a Chopin
piece on state radio when Germany invad-
ed in 1939. In rapid succession he
lost his career, his home, his family
and every point of reference.
This unforgettable movie beautifully
depicts Szpilman's wartime odyssey, but Polanski's
real subject is nothing less than the eradication of
civilization. The Nazis' annihilation of European
Jewry is a major facet, of course, but so is the destruc-
tion wrought on Warsaw, Poland's cultural capital.
In fact, Szpilman titled his 1946 memoir —
which screenwriter Ronald Harwood adapted for
the screen — Death of a City. (Szpilman's son
republished the book in Germany in 1999, and it
was then translated and published around the
world as. The Pianist.)
Far and away the film of the year, The Pianist is
weighty but never heavy handed, sobering but not
depressing. It is an extraordinarily moral work that
judges everyone equally and, ultimately, judges no
one. The English-language film starts out as a
Holocaust story a la Schindler's List and evolves into
a fate-filled saga of survival like Europa, Europa.
Polanski records the ghetto scenes with remark-
able detail and an unflinching gaze. The Pianist
does not depict much violence, but you feel every
blow and degradation.
Miraculously, Szpilman escapes the deportation
that takes his entire family to their deaths. But
grieving is a luxury no one can indulge, for even a
moment of inattention can prove fatal.
It is equally useless to blame God or the tepid
response of American Jews, although the doomed
Jews of Warsaw indict both. -
There are hints that life continues unaffected for
most non-Jews, who are indifferent or unaware of
the suffering within the ghetto's walls. But as the
film progresses (and the war wears on), it is clear
that no one remains untouched.
Indeed, one of the most fascinating aspects of
The Pianist is Polanski's attitude toward his fellow
Poles. Keep in mind that the Poles have always cast
themselves as victims of the Nazis, while
Holocaust survivors and historians have docu-
mented countless cases of Polish collaboration,
ranging from apathy to betrayal to murder.
When Szpilman manages to escape the ghetto,
before the eventual 1943 uprising, he is helped and
hidden by non-Jewish Poles. He also encounters
opportunists and people devoid of compassion.
In wartime, Polanski suggests, people are fright-
ened and desperate and capable of all kinds of
behavior. So we must be forgiving.
As Szpilman, Adrien Brody gives a low-key ren-
dition of a pitiable man drained by hunger and ill-
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2003
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